Survivors

by Z. A. Recht

  The pair crossed the bullet-pocked street that led to Sherman’s Freehold. Jack the Welder (who, despite having been with the group since the fall of Suez in January, refused to give his last name) unlocked the main gates for them. They entered, shut the swinging doors behind them, and secured them well.

  This building had become their home, their fortress, and most important, their last, best hope at defeating the Morningstar strain. Over the past several weeks the survivors had settled in. The main entryway, once open and inviting with wide windows and double doors, had been completely reworked. Two-by-fours had been bolted neatly across the window frames, sealing them completely shut. The doors themselves had been reinforced with chain mesh and a folding steel bar to lock them firmly in place.

  The result was a much dimmer but safer entryway. Candles weren’t hard to come by. No one had used them much before the pandemic, and yet almost every house or place of business had a bundle hidden away somewhere. They were now being put to good use. Here and there a pillar of wax sat burning away, giving the entryway a flickering, shadowy ambience.

  Originally meant as a reception area, it still bore the marks of its previous incarnation. A few inspirational posters hung on the walls, and a long-dead office plant sat neglected in a corner next to a smaller and green plastic one. Chairs and couches meant for clients had been dragged into a rough circle off to the side, leaving a clear aisle between the exit and the hall that led deeper into the facility.

  A stack of old magazines and tabloids was scattered across the only coffee table in the room. Lounging near the unruly pile with her feet propped up on the table was a slight Japanese girl, thumbing her way through a copy of The Week. She wore her hair short, and had bright, intelligent eyes. She spared Trev and Brewster a glance. “How’d you make out?” she asked.

  “I see you’re making good use of your time, Juni,” said Trev, nodding at the magazines. “As for the run—mostly medicines,” Trevor said, shrugging his pack higher on his shoulders. “I’m not sure about some of them, though.”

  “They’re expired,” Brewster added.

  “Hmm,” shrugged Juni, flipping a page. “Becky’ll be happy about that.”

  “What’s Becky’s personal weather forecast looking like today, Juni?” Brewster asked. “Sunny? Stormy?”

  Juni peered at him from behind the pages of her magazine. “Partly cloudy.”

  “Great,” said Brewster, sighing. Rebecca, a young woman who was pretty as a picture, but one that had become rather volatile, was something of a mystery to the group. One moment she was enthusiastic and helpful, and the next, taciturn and short-tempered.

  “I’d get those supplies to her, though,” Juni said, dropping the magazine on her lap. “She’s probably on her way down to meet the Doc right now.”

  “We’re on it,” Trevor said, slapping Brewster on the shoulder. “Let’s go, bud.”

  “See you around, beautiful,” said Brewster, grinning at Juni. She rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the stack of magazines in front of her. Then, just as quickly, she called out: “When do you think Sherman’ll let me go out with you two? I hate just sitting here.”

  Trev and Brewster exchanged glances and kept on moving deeper into the facility. Juni was becoming a broken record about going on scavenging runs.

  A long hallway ran away from reception and led to a four-way intersection. Three of the halls were flanked by offices, most of which had been taken over as personal living spaces and personalized in one way or another. It would help with the group’s morale, Sherman had said, if they were allowed a little leeway. Brewster had noted that the survivors had taken a kind of pride in adding their own touches to their rooms.

  A door with a welded Celtic knot design emblazoned on it marked Jack the Welder’s room. He’d found quite a treasure trove in the industrial park next door. He was forever sculpting this or that out of spare bits of metal, owing to his profession and, he said, his aspirations as an artist.

  The next room was Mitsui’s, the Japanese contractor, and the room beyond his was Juni’s. They were both Japanese, but only Juni spoke English these days, and the pair had formed a friendship because of it. It wasn’t anything romantic. Mitsui was far too old for Juni’s interest, and he would have considered it an improper relationship. Still, the pair stuck together, with Juni translating anything Mitsui needed to say. The door to Juni’s room was wide open and the walls were covered in brightly colored murals of trees, flowers, and steep mountainsides, mostly inspired by ads in the magazines she read, the pages carefully unstapled and reassembled for the pictures. Only the far wall remained unfinished, in black-and-white outlines.

  General Francis Sherman’s room was at the far end of the hall. The door was shut and locked, and besides the General, only Sergeant Major Thomas had ever been inside. No one knew what Sherman kept in there, but it was a frequent topic of conversation during downtime.

  Thomas refused to keep a room of his own. When he needed rest, he often slept on the couch in the facility’s entryway. He said that, should they be attacked in the night, he would hear the commotion first and raise the alarm.

  Mbutu Ngasy, the air traffic controller formerly of Mombasa, Kenya, and witness to the first human attacks on record, made himself at home on the building’s roof. He’d constructed a tent out of tarp and stakes, and had found a telescope in one of the nearby abandoned stores. It was a common sight for Brewster to see the tall, wide-shouldered man crouched on the edge of the roof, watching the stars at night and plotting their courses. He said it reminded him of his old job, and made him feel at peace. Of all the survivors, Mbutu was the most mysterious. He said little unless pressed, but what he did say invariably came true. Trevor called him a psychic. Brewster didn’t think so, but he and Trev had to agree that Mbutu was definitely intuitive. He had a sixth sense when it came to danger. The group loved him for it, and when Mbutu spoke, they listened well.

  Brewster was proud of his own room, and never hesitated to joke about his digs. He’d found and liberated a number of old posters—mostly of B movies, some of bands now long dead—and plastered them on the walls. Those walls he couldn’t cover were spray-painted in a dizzying array of colors. He called it his art, and jokingly claimed that once the pandemic was over and done with, his room would be a stop on a museum tour.

  Whenever he had to poke his head in there, Brewster saw how Rebecca Hall’s room reflected her dual personality. She’d shoved the desk the previous occupant had used against a far wall, and laid out her medical gear on the surface in a neat, orderly fashion. Everything was perfectly arranged. A map of the United States was pinned to the wall, with red thumbtacks stuck through many of the major cities—those infected beyond hope. Yellow tacks pockmarked the map as well, denoting areas where infection was likely. Two lonely green tacks adorned the map: one stuck on the western edge of Omaha, and one over Abraham, Kansas—the two bastions of humanity that Brewster was aware of, places devoid of the virus. The other end of the room reflected her second, unpredictable side. Clothing lay scattered around the floor in heaps, some dirty, some clean, all wrinkled. Her bed—more of a cot than anything else—was up against the far wall, unmade. The covers lay half-on, half-off the mattress, and her pillow had fallen to the floor.

  Trevor, like Mbutu, didn’t keep residence in the main complex. He barely slept, for that matter. He’d settled for wandering the halls at night, after most of the group had gone to sleep. He once told Brewster that when he did feel the need to rest, he would pull a chair to a window and doze with one eye open, always on the lookout for a demon to hunt.

  Krueger was safe and sound in his watchtower, outside the main complex. Of all the survivors, he had chosen the safest spot—though not for that reason. The forty-foot tower he lived in gave him a 360-degree view of the area, and, combined with his .30-06 rifle, made him the group’s first and finest line of defense. Brewster never felt anxious when Krueger was awake and in his tower—he was confident th
at any threat that approached would be dealt with before he even knew they were in peril.

  Brewster and Trev walked calmly past these rooms. They’d become quite comfortable in their lives here, and usually kept their minds occupied with thoughts of scavenging food and supplies, and the hope of developing a vaccine.

  Trev and Brewster came to the four-way intersection and moved straight on through, heading for the wide stairwell that led to the true reason behind the building’s existence: a biosafety level four laboratory.

  Only two were officially recognized in the United States. One was at Fort Detrick, in Maryland: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID for short. The second was in Atlanta, run by the Centers for Disease Control.

  This other lab was off the books and privately funded, the survivors camped above humanity’s last, best hope of developing a vaccine.

  Before they reached the stairwell, however, they passed a locked office door on their left. From inside, Brewster could hear the sound of rhythmic pounding. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Inside the room were two soldiers, prisoners of Sherman’s survivors. They’d surrendered when Sherman’s group had caught them unaware, and were now relegated to the small, featureless room that was serving as their prison cell. The only entertainment they were allowed was a ragged copy of National Geographic and a moldy tennis ball. They almost didn’t even get that much, but Sherman, who had an em-pathetic streak in him, couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the enemy soldiers alone with nothing at all to do. Even convicted felons were allowed some form of entertainment.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Brewster paused, turned to the door, and slammed his palm against it. “Hey! Knock it off! We didn’t give you that damn tennis ball so you could annoy the shit out of us with it!”

  A moment passed in silence before a surly voice answered back. “Yeah? Why don’t you come in here and get it?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Brewster said, and turned away, catching up with Trev.

  “Why do we even keep those two in there?” Trevor asked.

  “Collateral, I guess. Hostages, maybe. What do you want us to do with ’em? It’s not like we have a lot of options.”

  “We have plenty of options,” Trev said, pulling open the stairwell door and holding it as Brewster stepped through. “In case you’ve forgotten, those bastards tried to kill us. They had us dead to rights when we first got here. And they killed Matt! They shot him right in front of Juni!”

  “Hell, we’ve all done our share of killing—”

  “In self-defense,” Trev said, voice rising slightly. “They’re murderers. And now they’re costing us food, water, shelter—I say we just take them out back and shoot them.”

  Brewster raised his eyebrows. For a “crazy man,” Trev was normally very rational. He’d never heard him advocate execution before. “That’s a little drastic, the whole eye-for-an-eye thing. I’m sure Sherman knows what he’s doing. If he thought they were a threat, or if he thought we couldn’t handle them, we would have gotten rid of them by now. They did dig the slit trench. And they’re still in the process.”

  “Maybe,” Trev said, but he didn’t sound convinced. His boots rang out on the stairs as the pair descended. The slit trench was something that none of the survivors wanted to work on . . . while the Fac had light and water they brought in, the restrooms didn’t work so well, so Denton and Thomas had rescued a couple of porta-potties from a construction site and brought them in. The prisoners had dug the trench from the toilets to the runoff behind the Fac and had to work on it from time to time to keep things flowing.

  Brewster tapped Trev on the shoulder in a conciliatory gesture. “Look, I see where you’re coming from. But they’ll get what’s coming to them in the end. Hell, maybe Sherman’s keeping them around just to have a couple of guinea pigs for Dr. Demilio to test on.”

  Trev chuckled and shook his head. “All right. You’ve got me there.”

  The pair circled the wide landing and headed down the last set of stairs into the basement, nearly running directly into Rebecca Hall, the short young woman with dirty-blond hair who had been with the group since before Suez. Her naturally trim form had grown even thinner over the past few months. She ate little, spoke less, and when she did open her mouth it was usually with a biting comment. It wasn’t that she was unpleasant. Unlike the rest of the group, Brewster knew that she held little to no hope for the future. She managed to paint a grim enough expression on her face to discourage any flirtatious advances from the male survivors. She was backing out of a medical supply closet toting a cart behind her when she almost collided with Brewster and Trevor.

  “Hey!” she exclaimed, narrowing her eyes. “Watch where you’re going!”

  “Hiya, sunshine,” Brewster said, grinning. “We’ve got some presents for you.”

  “Oh, goody,” Rebecca said acidly, and pointed an outstretched finger at the cart. “Just dump them there. I’m heading to the lab now, anyway.”

  Brewster, a literalist when it suited him, opened his rucksack and upended the contents onto the cart. Rebecca cast him an agonized glance and began sorting through the boxes and bottles. Trevor took his time, unloading his findings by hand while engaging Rebecca in conversation. “Tell the Doc that some of this stuff is beyond its expiration date,” he said, holding up one of the bottles of Cipro to illustrate his point. “It might still be good, but she should know. How’re things coming in there?”

  “How do you think?” Rebecca snapped, then looked guilty for doing so. She took a deep breath and softened up. “I’m sorry. It’s just not going so well. Every day it’s the same tests, the same negative results. I’m not sure what we’re missing. Hell, I don’t understand most of what we’re doing in there. I’m no help at all.”

  “Don’t worry,” Trevor said, handing her the last bottle of medicine. “I’m sure you two will figure it out sooner or later.”

  “And maybe once you do we’ll get to see you smile,” Brewster said, still grinning. “I mean, come on. Just once. It won’t break your face. I swear.”

  Rebecca held up her middle finger. “Get back upstairs. If you stick around down here, I might break your face. I’ll get the cart.”

  Brewster chuckled. After Thomas, Rebecca seemed to dislike Brewster the most. Irrepressible as always, he favored Rebecca with a wry smile, returning her gesture with one of his own.

  “See you, Becky,” said Trev, waving.

  Rebecca watched the men walk back up the stairs, chatting back and forth, until the doors swung shut behind them. Once they were gone, she grabbed the wheeled cart and began the walk toward the biosafety level four laboratory. A second set of double doors, directly opposite those leading to the stairs, confronted her. A simple keypad sat in place of a handle. Normally she would have had to enter a six-digit access code to enter, but Mitsui, handy with electronics, had disabled it. There was no need for security at this particular checkpoint any longer. Rebecca backed into the doors, pushing them open for the cart, which she pulled in after herself.

  A long, dim hallway stretched out before her. It was as Spartan as the rest of the facility: white walls, white tiled floor, white ceiling panels. The lighting was only half-on. Every other bulb sat dark to conserve what little power reserves they had. The cart’s wheels squeaked with each rotation. That and Rebecca’s footsteps were the only sounds in the corridor, echoing dully off the walls.

  Rebecca glanced to her left as she passed a side room with a wide observation window set into the wall. The room was dark and devoid of life, but the light from the hallway was just enough to give her a look at several rows of lab stations. Freezers lined the far wall, and surgical gowns and masks hung near the door. A sign beside the entryway warned passersby that the room was a biological hazard area, complete with a red-on-white painting of the international biohazard symbol. Beneath that, in smaller, precise lettering, was the simple code: “BL1.” Within, she coul
d make out the still form of Gregory Mason, still recovering from the wounds he had received in his fight with Derrick, another National Security Agency employee, upon their taking of the Fac.

  She continued on down the hallway, passing another doorway with a similar warning etched beside it, and the lettering “BL2.” The door to that room, unlike the first, was solid steel, and had the look of a submarine hatch, minus the wheel. Rebecca knew it would seal airtight when pulled shut. In addition to the gowns, Rebecca saw a rack of hanging gas masks with a shelf of replacement filters inside. The scientists who had worked in there before the pandemic would have to wear them: several of the diseases they would have been looking into were airborne and highly contagious.

  Rebecca came up short against yet another pair of thick, swinging doors with a small black plastic keypad in place of a knob. This was the second security checkpoint, still active. She entered a code into the keypad, and the locks retracted. Before the pandemic, there would have been an armed security guard there to check her paperwork as well.

  Rebecca backed through the door towing the cart behind her. The doors swung shut quietly, and she heard the locks click back into place.

  There were only two doorways in this section of hallway, and no offices. The closest portal was off to her left, and had the same submarine-like hatch as the BL2 lab. Instead of a simple entryway, however, it had a small, one-man decontamination area added into the design, a control point. Outside the portal hung full plastic face shields and hoods alongside a number of hazmat suits. They weren’t completely airtight, but close enough. The researchers working in that room would have to go through several stages of preparation before they could clock in or out, and for good reason: the diseases stored inside could easily kill, and were highly infectious. A small screwed-in sign on the hatch read “BL3.”

  The only other door in the hallway sat at the far end of a narrow catwalk, separated by an open, empty space from the rest of the building.